Every once in a while I’ll be driving along and see some guy, you know the type, with long, scraggly hair and a mustache that won’t quite grow in, wearing an army jacket with some jagged, blood-dripping heavy metal logo emblazoned on the back. I’m always surprised that these creatures still exist, doomed to haunt the Taco Bells and arena parking lots of the world, smoking, sulking and bobbing their heads to the murderous pulse that only metalheads understand.
From ages 15 to 18, I was one of those guys. Well, not quite. My hair looked stupid long, so my headbanging prowess was severely handicapped, and facial hair at that age was out of the question. But in all but appearance, I was a card-carrying member of the church of Metal. I scrawled Megadeth lyrics into my notebook during Advanced Biology class instead of taking notes on the duodenum of the earthworm. I made an Anthrax T-shirt in art class with puff paint. I whispered Slayer lyrics to my friends in the hallways as a form of code, a totem of the little secret that no one outside our group seemed to grasp. It was dorky, sure, but in Shoals, Indiana, in 1992, damn, we felt like revolutionaries. We didn’t drink, smoke, and only swore when there were no adults around, but we had Metal.
I started with Anthrax: cartoonish, profane, laden with Stephen King references, occasionally preachy (“cry for the indians/die for the indians!”), but most of all, *fast*. After a couple friends slipped me a copy of the New York quintet’s I’m The Man EP that seemed to materialize from nowhere, I was obsessed. On many a Friday evening, I could be found tapping my feet furiously to Charlie Benante’s double-bass, straining my voice to sing along with Joey Belladonna’s high-pitched histrionics, windmilling to Scott Ian’s relentless rhythm guitar. This usually took place, like most memorable teenage events, in the passenger seat of a car headed absolutely nowhere.
Soon thereafter I discovered the acidic splendor of Megadeth, who later supplanted Anthrax as my favorites of the genre. Led by singer/guitarist Dave Mustaine, a bitter ex-junkie and the single most compelling personality this side of Lemmy in the metal realm (at least until he cleaned up, got married, and allowed himself to be photographed on a beige couch with his dog), Megadeth concocted complex anthems of global decay and personal demons, punctuated by Mustaine’s signature wicked witch sneer. And the music was even better. Given to endlessly mutating melodies propped up by a pummeling, time-shifting drum battery and one sizzling guitar solo after another, Megadeth thrashed with both surgical precision and indulgent expansiveness. Their masterwork, 1990’s Rust In Peace, is virtually the lone record of the genre to survive in my record collection to this day, its icy textures glued to my subconscious even still.
It would be wrong not to mention Slayer. Long considered the most extreme act in the country and the originators of death metal (which we’ll get to in a minute), an on-paper description of their sound is irrelevant. You have to listen to a poorly-dubbed copy of Reign In Blood in a car speeding past chicken houses in the middle of a malevolent night of vandalism and petty shoplifting to truly grasp the eerie allure of Slayer. Brandon, naturally, took to Slayer with a passion that alienated schoolmates and troubled our parents.
There were others: Testament, Overkill, Pantera, Nuclear Assault (!), Exodus, Death Angel, Suicidal Tendencies, White Zombie, even Metallica before they went to shit. And finally, the many-headed hideous beast that was death metal. Once again, Brandon led the way down this corpse-littered path of Metal Maniacs magazine, ludicrous tempos, subterranean riffage, and vocals that went “BLEEEOOOOURRRRGGGGHHH!!!” Soon we were dissecting the subtle differences between the bowel-scraping vocal stylings of Obituary’s John Tardy and the more Viking-like roar of Napalm Death’s Barney Greenway. Sillier yet were Cannibal Corpse, a somewhat controversial outfit who made their name with gore-strewn, remarkably offensive album art and lyrics that were even worse. Not that you could reconcile what was printed on the lyric sheet with the Cookie Monster-influenced belch of CC frontman Chris Barnes. Eventually he left the group and they went out and got another guy who sounded just like him.
The pinnacle of my Metal years came just after I had graduated high school in June ’93, when Megadeth, Pantera and White Zombie came to the cavernous Roberts Stadium in Evansville, Indiana. I drew the Megadeth logo on my work calendar at Burger King in an act of defiance. Even going to buy the tickets was an event. By the time the evening of the show arrived and six of us loaded into two cars to speed to Evansville, I literally vibrated with excitement.
The night did not disappoint. After purchasing the obligatory black skull-covered tee (which I would later wear to the Catfish Festival queen contest in Shoals, drawing stares from some) and watching the first two bands in wide-eyed awe, we crowded toward the stage as Megadeth’s glistening metallic stage set was constructed. Our friend Joe Quinn inquired reverently, “Do you realize we’re about to see the greatest heavy metal band of all time?” and the stage was set. Coming onstage to the sounds of helicopters and war and neat crap like that, Megadeth launched into “Holy Wars … The Punishment Due” and proceeded to fry our young minds until they exited with their traditional cover of the Sex Pistols’ “Anarchy In The UK.” We stumbled sweatily from the arena and likely couldn’t imagine a future beyond Metal.
You can imagine how it hurt when all the above bands started, in varying degrees, to suck. Desperate to remain relevant as public favor fell to grunge, industrial rock, gangsta rap and frat-funk, metal groups diluted their heaviness with poorly executed stabs at these genres. Anthrax were especially guilty, riding an association with Public Enemy as far as they could before fading into obscurity. Slayer’s famed bloodlust went stale. Even the seemingly invincible Megadeth became declawed versions of their former selves overnight with the turd-like Youthanasia album.
Or maybe we just grew out of Metal. College came and the time was ripe for me to become a more thoughtful audiophile. Luckily, the jump from Nuclear Assault to the Jayhawks and John Coltrane was a surprisingly easy one. But it must be obvious from this pile of words that my affections for headbanging clamor run deep. I can put on Rust In Peace on certain off-center nights and be instantly transported to an era that was a blast in every way. Scoff at Metal if you will; I don’t know what we would have done without it.
Lane Hewitt used to own an Anthrax medallion.